Water Refugee

When I started my first year of college, I had one goal in mind and it had nothing to do with school. I wanted to earn a spot on the U.S. National Water Polo Team. I never imagined that my new coach would be someone I looked up to. Someone whose entire career I meticulously followed... and someone I had a misguided crush on. The first moment I lock eyes with Fallon Harris is the moment everything changed. The Olympics weren’t the only thing on my mind anymore. He doesn't feel the same because everything that comes out of his mouth is anything but admiration.

Jake Bronson's family and friends are mourning him. They'd watched as he sacrificed himself so their lives could return to normal. But normal wasn't to be. The megalomaniac whom Jake had killed during his suicide assault left a legacy of videos that damn Jake and everyone associated with him, leading to a price being put on their heads, dead or alive. As the jaws of a terrorist trap begin to close, Jake's eight-year-old son, Alex, faces a threat of his own.

Colton Locke can’t forget the black op that went terribly wrong. Desperate for a new start, he moves to Lantern Beach, North Carolina, and forms Blackout, a private security firm. Despite his hero status, he can’t erase the mistakes he’s made. For the past year, Elise Oliver hasn’t been able to shake the feeling that there’s more to her husband’s death than she was told. When she finds a hidden box of his personal possessions, more questions - and suspicions - arise. The only person she trusts to help her is her husband’s best friend Colton Locke.

Just weeks after World War II ends, three women from different corners of the world arrive in Germany to run a Displaced Persons camp. They long to help rebuild shattered lives—including their own… For Martha, going to Germany provides an opportunity to escape Brooklyn and a violent marriage. Arriving from England is orphaned Kitty. She hopes working at the camp will bring her closer to her parents, last seen before the war began. For Delphine, Paris has been a city of ghosts after her husband and son died in Dachau.

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical, and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence.